All board members should get on board with compliance plan

The Stark Metropolitan Housing Authority has a massive job to do in the next year: Fix 26 areas of noncompliance with federal rules that resulted in an order to repay $10.5 million to Washington.

The stakes are huge: Failure to complete the plan could send SMHA into receivership, which amounts to the feds taking over control of local public housing programs.

The SMHA board can’t allow this to happen.

The tax money that the agency uses is supposed to help Stark County residents.. Decisions about how best to do this should be made here, not in Washington.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has the five-member board on a tight timeline to complete the plan, which the board adopted Thursday. As The Rep noted Friday, Executive Director Herman Hill has been working on a number of these areas. But by Feb. 28, for example, the board must “assess its knowledge, skills and abilities and request training in any/all areas identified as areas of weakness.”

This self-reflection may be difficult for a board that is still in denial about its failure to provide the kind of oversight that is expected of it — expected not only by the feds but also by at least some of the local people who appointed the board members. Among them are a Stark County commissioner and two judges who attended the Thursday meeting.

Board member Daniel Fonte said at the meeting that he won’t be “the fall guy. HUD has culpability for this.” Three other members — Frank Beane, Marilyn Frazier and Jeff McDaniels — wouldn’t say anything beyond indicating that they agree with Fonte. Only member Linda Bell chose not to pass the buck.

In February, she will be joined on the board by longtime bank executive Roger Mann, whose willingness to get involved with SMHA at such a difficult time is commendable. If Bell, Mann and Hill have to lead the compliance effort, so be it. But we hope that all of the board members will be willing to do whatever work needs to be done to put the plan into effect by the deadlines they’ve been given. At this point, it’s the best way for them to keep the commitment they made to SMHA clients when they joined the board.